Don’t forget noncombat veterans

On Veterans Day, we pause to reflect on the cost of war; not just deaths, but the maiming, the mind-numbing effects of such carnage and terror. But there’s much more to war than combat.

Back in my dad’s time – World War I – there were front lines and rear areas and combat zones and safe zones, where a soldier could rest and recuperate before going back to combat.

Bombs, artillery shells, mortars, strafing planes, newfangled tanks, mustard gas, barbed wire and mines contributed to the horror of the battlefield, along with insane frontal assaults on machine guns and the misery of trench warfare.

In modern warfare – Vietnam and the Middle East – things changed. No rear areas or safe zones. War wounds include post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological traumas, such as the terror of a sniper’s bullet smashing into a soldier’s head. You were not safe – anywhere.

Whatever the reality, it’s combat that seems to capture the public attention when it comes to honoring veterans and thanking them for their service. I have the utmost respect for combatants, but I think it is unfortunate that men and women who are not characterized as “combat troops” are often seen as not having really participated in armed conflict. Yet, they are vital.

For every combat troop, many more were (and still are) needed to supply fuel, food, ammo, weapons, blankets, beer, tents, generators and vehicles. But more than that, these veterans were the carpenters erecting buildings and the electricians who wired them. They were the cooks, clerk typists, intelligence and operations specialists, janitors, lawyers, judges, doctors and nurses.

Some of the tasks were pouring concrete, stringing miles of wire, interpreting aerial reconnaissance footage, loading bombs and missiles onto aircraft, maintaining computers, spying and devising strategy.

Another indignity for noncombat personnel that I experienced was the condescending attitude of regular troops toward Reserve or National Guard counterparts. On active duty, even during basic or advanced training, we were second-class citizens. Some saw us as cowards; but when I enlisted, August 1962, there wasn’t war, and Vietnam was but a whisper about needing volunteers to train South Vietnamese troops. Only the very brave (or the very stupid) volunteered, and at one point, I was told by a drill instructor that he thought Vietnam was in Africa somewhere.

I had family and friends in the Reserve or Guard and, more importantly, wanted to serve my country, yet get on with college and law school. Reserve forces do another service for our country: We go on limited active duty, and then live at home earning an income or going to school, or whatever. In my time, we drilled one weekend a month and 15 days every summer, saving all of the costs associated with active-duty troops. And yet many veterans may have been in or near the site of war but did not see combat.

Many of us who trained basic combat trainees are reluctant to call ourselves Vietnam veterans, because we were never in Vietnam. There is now some informal movement allowing us to call ourselves Vietnam-era veterans.

We tend to think only of combat veterans as “real veterans.” But every man and woman who swore an oath and donned a uniform should be honored on Veterans Day.

Larry E. Krueger, of Spokane, is a former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve.